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For nearly four decades, Joan Goloboy made sure Marblehead showed up on television — not a polished or packaged version of local life, but the real one: Select Board arguing over budgets, high school athletes competing on Friday nights, historians walking old-cow-path streets and pointing at old houses. She did it first as a volunteer, then as a producer, then as the executive director of the nonprofit that runs the town's public-access station. At the end of March, she retired.
Goloboy has stepped down as executive director of Marblehead Community Access and Media, Inc. (MHTV), closing a chapter for an institution that has documented Marblehead's civic life — its town meetings, its sports seasons, its history and its hardest moments — through every major shift in the media landscape.
Goloboy grew up studying acting, majored in theater at Brandeis University and made her way to New York City, where she worked in the classified advertising department of The New York Times while auditioning regularly and performing in off-Broadway and “off-off-Broadway productions”. She sang in bars and other venues around the city. When she and her husband moved to Massachusetts — first to Cambridge, then to Marblehead, where he had grown up — the theater career gave way to something else.
A friend in New York had recently started a job learning video editing, and the work sounded interesting. Goloboy came home intending to take editing courses at Salem State. Then cable came to town.
"I walked through the door," she said, "and I became a volunteer."
She covered Select Board meetings, hauled heavy cameras and produced a documentary on one of Marblehead's show houses — a project she proposed before fully understanding what it would require. She was hired as a public affairs producer and spent roughly 17 years in the cable-company era, rising from producer to regional management through a succession of owners — Continental Cablevision and four companies after it — before Comcast restructured its studio operations. At her peak in that era, she managed public-access stations for multiple towns north of Boston.
She then moved into media consulting and joined Endicott College as a faculty member and director of its digital media center. In 2009, Marblehead's public-access operation was reorganized as a nonprofit. Two years later, Goloboy came back as executive director.
Cultivating harmony
Bob Peck, who has served on the MHTV board since the nonprofit's early years and was among those who hired her, said the decision was not a close call.
"She was just head and shoulders above everyone," Peck said. "There was always harmony within the operation. She's a good people person, a good people manager — just an excellent leader of the organization."
Over the next 15 years, Goloboy oversaw a complete technological overhaul — from analog tape and bulky cassettes to digital workflows, lighter field equipment and broader distribution — and steered the station through the pandemic, when MHTV began using Zoom files, expanded its digital newsletter and worked to reach residents who had left cable behind.
Pam Evans, who started as a volunteer in 2009 and eventually became the station's community outreach coordinator, said Goloboy shaped how she worked and what she produced.
"She is an excellent teacher — encouraging and patient with a wonderful creative eye," Evans said. "Whenever I got off track on a passionate or creative endeavor, she was able to carefully and kindly set me straight and make my project better."
That approach defined her relationships with staff across decades. Jon Caswell began volunteering alongside Goloboy in 1987, shortly after the studio opened, and was hired full time in 1989. He described her less as a director than as a collaborator — someone who made clear what needed to be done and then stepped back.
"She never said you have to do it this way," Caswell said. "As long as it got done, you could do it how you wanted."
That philosophy extended well beyond the edit bay. Caswell said Goloboy supported him through personal difficulties over the years in ways that had nothing to do with deadlines or production schedules. "She made it fun to work there," he said. "It was just a pleasure."
The same management style drew James Maroney to the station. Goloboy recruited him in 2014, and he became the station's primary voice for community features and local storytelling — the kind of work that makes a local station feel like a neighbor rather than a bulletin board.
"My life has forever changed thanks to Joan," Maroney said. "She gave me the opportunity to be creative in a historical seaside town that offered me the opportunity to highlight the wonderful people making Marblehead a special place to work and live."
Jess Burton, a Marblehead High School graduate who volunteered for years before joining the staff, rounded out a team that elevated the quality of sports coverage; the station broadcast 51 local sports events in a single year.
What she leaves behind
That last achievement points to the broader mission Goloboy protected even as the funding model beneath it grew shakier.
"The federal language that allowed public access to exist and thrive was based on cable subscribers, not broadband, not apps, nothing else," she said.
According to nonprofit financial filings, MHTV reported roughly $582,000 in revenue in 2024 and approximately $493,000 in expenses, with assets of about $2.11 million. Peck confirmed that funding flows primarily from quarterly payments representing a percentage of gross revenues from both Comcast and Verizon under the terms of their cable contracts — a structure under growing pressure as residents cut the cord for streaming services.
"You have to be able to spend some of your time doing what you're really passionate about," Goloboy said, "so that if you have to do something that you're not wild about, you're still going to do it."
The awards record during her tenure reflected the operation she built. MHTV won the Alliance for Community Media's national Overall Excellence award nine times, including a 2024 win in its budget category, and collected regional honors throughout. Each year, Goloboy assembled a roughly 20-minute compilation of clips drawn from across the station's programming to submit for consideration.
Among the history projects she remembered most vividly were years of collaboration with historian Bette Hunt — walking tours, local-history programs, a documentary on the Grand Army of the Republic Museum and a show on Marblehead's involvement in the Civil War. Caswell, who accompanied Goloboy and Hunt on many of those shoots, recalled them as some of the most rewarding work of his career. The station was also there in 1997 when the USS Constitution sailed into the harbor, setting up alongside every major television network near the Marblehead Light as the historic frigate passed.
She pointed to "Marblehead Youth News," a youth news-magazine program in which 18 elementary- and middle-school-aged children handled every production role — writing, editing, directing and anchoring — with support from MHTV staff and parent volunteers. The program was the only show of its kind on the North Shore. The pandemic effectively ended it; the parent infrastructure that sustained it never fully rebuilt.
On the MHTV board, she was unambiguous.
"Hands down, we had the best board in town," she said.
What comes next
The station's new executive director is Brian Hebert, who previously led the public-access operation in Bedford. The studio itself has been closed since September after a flood damaged the facility at Veterans Middle School; most of the interior has been moved into a storage pod outside while roof repairs are completed. Programming has continued in the meantime.
Peck said he expected a smooth transition, even as he acknowledged the weight of what Goloboy leaves behind. "Joan has tough shoes to fill," he said.
Maroney put it more personally.
"I'll miss her sharp focus and leadership on how to best serve our cable subscribers and the community," he said. "I'll miss her deeply."
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